St Mary's Early Childhood Center

FAMILY ENGAGEMENT: St. Mary's Child Center provides a family engagement program for the families of our preschool students. All families in the program are welcome to participate. We offer family activities through the year. Families meet with Educators and Staff to interact in the centers and learn more about what is happening in the classrooms. A large snack or meal is provided during this time. We work with families year-round to assist in finding resources and necessary services. The program aspect works to assist the family as a whole.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: St. Mary's Professional Development Program provides professional development to early childhood educators, focusing on teachers who work with children living in poverty. St. Mary's has been positioned carefully to provide teacher training about best practices, the Reggio Approach, and Applied Education Neuroscience (AEN). We offer seminars, internships, consulting, study tours and a coaching model for more intensive professional development. St. Mary's educators have also presented at state level conferences regularly. The staff at St. Mary's is qualified and has studied the Reggio Approach around the world and has been approved for site visits by Italian educators from Reggio Emilia. Our outreach efforts transitioned to hybrid professional development this past fiscal year, transitioning from strictly virtual training due to COVID 19 the year before. Despite the challenges of COVID, 1,172 educators, counselors, and school leaders were served. Our presentations focused on the Reggio philosophy and applied educational neuroscience strategies in the preschool classroom. The hybrid platform has allowed us to reach participants across the state, who now have the option to join virtually if they cannot make the trip in person.

PRESCHOOL CURRICULUM: Over 150 children attend St. Mary's Child Center daily. We provide a low adult to child ratio (1:7) to ensure that we can focus on the social and emotional, as well as cognitive and physical, development of the children. The high-quality curriculum mitigates the risks to development and promotes school readiness to help the children reach their potential and be successful in school and later life. It is expected that poor children enter kindergarten at a 3- or 4-year development level. The overall growth across all domains averaged 91% with the post-test, a drastic increase from 66% measured from the pre-test. Children are considered proficient if they are proficient in 80% of items within the category.